The Rise Of The Part-Time Economy In One Chart

America’s labour market has undergone all kinds of transformations following the Great Recession.

Among the more worrisome trends: The proportion of full-time jobs to overall jobs has fallen off the deck.

Wells Fargo Securities recently published their “Favourite Charts of 2013” and it included a chart illustrating this phenomenon. Their data show that while we are just 1.3 million payrolls below pre-recession levels, we remain 5 million full-time jobs below the pre-recession peak. Through the first 11 months of 2013, full-time monthly job growth has averaged just 96,000 payrolls a month. At that rate, it will be more than four years before we return to pre-recession levels of full-time employment.